Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading - George Park Fisher

THE OTTOMAN SULTANS.

[Mainly from George's Genealogical Tables.]

zealously but in vain exhorted to crusades against the Turk. Paul II. (1464-1471) pursued the same course; but after him, for a half-century, there ensued the deplorable era when the pontiffs were more busied with other interests than with those pertaining to the weal of Christianity. The pontificates of Sixtus IV. (1471-1484), Innocent VIII. (1484-1492), and especially of Alexander VI. (1492-1503), the second pope of the Borgia family, present a lamentable picture of worldly schemes and of "nepotism," as the projects for the temporal advancement of their relatives were termed. The Roman principality was the prey of petty tyrants, and the theater of wars, and of assassinations perpetrated by the knife or with poison. Alexander VI. succeeded in subduing or destroying all these petty lords. He was seconded in these endeavors by his son Cæsar Borgia, brave, accomplished, and fascinating, but a monster of treachery and cruelty. No deed was savage or base enough to cost him any remorse. Hardly had he acquired the Romagna, when Pope Alexander died. Although his death was due to Roman fever, legend speedily ascribed it to poison. His son was betrayed, was imprisoned for a time by Ferdinand the Catholic, and, while he was in the service of the King of Navarre, was slain before the castle of Viana.

NAPLES.—In Naples, Ferdinand I., who was established on his throne by the defeat of his competitors in 1462, provoked a revolt of his barons by his tyranny, invited them to a festival to celebrate a reconciliation with them, and caused them to be seized at the table, and then to be put to death. He treated the people with equal injustice and cruelty. He allowed the Turks to take Otranto (1480), and the Venetians to take Gallipoli and Policastro (1484).

WEAKNESS OF ITALY.—Italy, at the close of the fifteenth century, with all its proficiency in art and letters, and its superiority in the comforts and elegances of life, was a prey to anarchy. This was especially true after the death of Lorenzo de Medici. Diplomacy had become a school of fraud. Battles had come to be, in general, bloodless; but either perfidy, or prison and the dagger, were the familiar instruments of warfare. The country from its beauty, its wealth, and its factious state, was an alluring prize to foreign invaders.

VI. THE OTTOMAN TURKS.

THEIR CONQUESTS.—The empire of Mohammed II. (1451-1481) extended from the walls of Belgrade, on the Danube, to the middle of Asia Minor. To the east was the Seljukian principality of Caramania in the center of Asia Minor, and, when that was finally overthrown (1486), Persia, whose hostility was inflamed by differences of sect. The conquest of the Greek Empire was achieved by Mohammed. Matthias Corvinus (1458-1493), the successor of Hunyady, was the greatest of the kings of Hungary, and defended the line of the Danube against the Turkish assaults. For twenty-three years Scanderbeg, the intrepid Prince of Albania, repulsed all the attacks of the Moslems. It was not until ten years after his death (1467) that his principal stronghold was surrendered to the invaders. The attacks on the Venetians have already been mentioned, as well as the capture of Otranto. Bajazet II. was more inclined to study than to war: his brother Djem, who tried to supplant him, passed as a prisoner into the hands of Pope Alexander VI. An annual tribute was paid by the Sultan for keeping him from coming back to Turkey; and when, at last, he was released, rumor declared that he had been poisoned. Selim I. (1512-1520) entered anew on the path of conquest. He defeated the Persians, and made the Tigris his eastern boundary. He annexed to his empire Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. The Sultan now became the commander of the faithful, the inheritor of the prophetic as well as military leadership. The conquest of Alexandria by Selim (1517) inflicted a mortal blow on the commerce of Venice, by intercepting its communication with the Orient. The despotic domination of Selim stretched from the Danube to the Euphrates, and from the Adriatic to the cataracts of the Nile. Such was the empire which the Ottoman conqueror handed down to his son, Soliman I. the Magnificent (1520-1566). Mohammed II. and Selim were the two conquerors by whom the Ottoman Empire was built up. Each of them combined with an iron will and revolting cruelty a taste for science and poetry, and the genius of a ruler. They take rank among the most eminent tyrants in Asiatic history. While they were spreading their dominion far and wide, the popes and the sovereigns of the West did nothing more effectual than to debate upon the means of confronting so great a danger.

RUSSIA.